


The Enemy

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Complete, F/M, For QuizzicalQuinnia, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 20:57:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2402633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth. A prompt response for J/B Week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Enemy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QuizzicalQuinnia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuizzicalQuinnia/gifts).



> QuizzicalQuinnia mentioned 'clam digging'. So this is for you, QQ! :)
> 
> My thanks, as ever, must go to RoseHeart for her patience, kindness and understanding.
> 
> Disclaimer - I own it not.

THE ENEMY

“If you stay in there too long today, I’ll just have to come in and drag you back out.”

Brienne huffs as she cracks a narrow but sturdy stick the length of her forearm away from the nearest tree and crouches down. “As if you could,” she mutters, tearing off leaves and twigs, placing them carefully onto their little blaze.

“I dragged you through knee-deep snow for more than a bloody hour after you took that blow to your head,” Jaime counters.

Brienne just looks at him, a smile starting to quiver onto her thick lips. “I don’t remember that, so it doesn’t count.”

He playfully snatches a twig from her fingers and leans it against his side of the pile of slowly igniting fire, though it will be a while before this one, still hoary with frost, takes to flame. “Of course you don’t remember it,” he says. “You were unconscious. And damned heavy.”

The glance she sends him carries only a touch of the ire such a statement would bring from any other woman. Instead, as she rises, it speaks more of thanks. She turns to gaze out at the enemy.

It has been four days since they chose to deviate from the Kingsroad on their journey. The war might be done, but the main route south has proven as dangerous as it has ever been, with those having survived the winter night forced to prey on each other mercilessly to survive. At one point, it seemed like every other frozen hedgerow sheltered a pair or two of desperate eyes. The Maid and the Kingslayer are both all too weary of the blade. Of seeing warm blood steaming in the frigid air. So they struck out to follow the shoreline of Long Lake for a spell.

They have seen fewer people since doing so, circling those equally cautious travellers at a safe distance and trading useful information in brief, shouted conversations. Such an exchange had served to lead them to this string of small inlets, tiny pockets of relative warmth, though the ground remains dusted with snow. Here, the weakly reborn sun shines for most of the short days. It has managed to win its own fight, burrowing its way through the ice and leaving a goodly expanse of unfrozen, open water. 

Their progress has been slow and their meagre supplies have dwindled. There isn’t much, but here some food might be found. Though not by him. Jaime has managed to master many tasks with his lone hand. This, however, is not one of them, and Brienne had called him all manner of fools when he suggested they both go into the water. “And have both of us soaked and freezing? No. I go in. You keep the fire going and get me dry afterwards.”

The harbourer of the enemy appears most placid in the light of the falling sun, the gentle ripples of its surface glinting brightly under a piercing blue sky. Guilt stabs at Jaime while he clears a space on the frozen ground with his boot and dumps their furs and a clean shirt there, ready for her return. “I’m still not sure about these shellfish, you know,” he offers. “Perhaps you shouldn’t...”

“You ate them well enough yesterday,” Brienne interrupts, looking at him as if he were an errant child, seeing straight through his poor ruse. “And didn’t you grow up next to the sea?”

“Oddly enough, I hardly spent any of my youth consorting with the fisherfolk of Lannisport.”

At this, Brienne snorts, “Lannisters,” and shakes her head, unsurprised.

He taps his fingers lightly against her arm, unapologetically saying, “I like game. You do too.” 

“Well, you tell me when you see a herd of deer and we shall eat most heartily.” She unclasps her cloak and takes a deep breath when that layer of warmth is lost to her. “In the meantime, be ready.”

Jaime nods, takes her cloak, draping it over tree branch near the fire and feels as he did when he was a squire again. Brienne stamps with her right foot a little, like a warhorse nervously pawing at the ground before battle. He leans down to retrieve her stick as she hurriedly begins to unlace her breeches, kicking them off along with her boots. Then she and her stick are gone, her long, pale legs eating up the short distance between their fire and the water lapping the mud on the shore. She strides into it without pause, though a sharp cry tumbles from her lips. 

Of all the things they have fought together, the cold is the one that remains to dog them. He can hardly remember a time when it wasn’t there any more, the days of summers past surely a memory from someone else’s life. Something twists inside him as the enemy takes this first bite into her.

Jaime doesn't know what this feeling is between them. This coiled tension that only binds them together, more tightly when Brienne is not near, and when she is being foolishly, almost damn recklessly, brave. He would call it love, but that doesn't seem quite right. He has been in love before and he is sure there was far more fucking involved. As Brienne begins to dig through the mud at the bottom of the knee deep water with her stick, sweeping her free arm through it to catch anything that might be shaken loose from the lake bed, Jaime concedes to himself, at least, that the idea fills him with something other than the repulsion it once did. He would be a fool indeed to think that the countless mornings he has woken up, his cock achingly hard and pressed against her, have meant nothing. But nothing is all he has to offer her now. His time is short and a Kingslayer’s death awaits him in the capital. He will not take what, by now, he suspects Brienne would freely give, not when she would have to live with the shame of it after he is gone. 

There is a happier cry from the water, and despite the fact that she must be hurting already, Brienne’s first small catch is waved at him with a wide grin. At this distance, she looks like an oversized child with her missing teeth, her freckles and sincere determination.

_She is too good for me._

As if the sight of her legs weren't enough to set his mind to wandering down some unnervingly interesting paths, the Maid of Tarth pulls up the front of her long shirt and gathers the hem in her fist, grasping it in a bunch between her uneven teeth and letting it hang from her lowered head. It will serve as a carrier, and she drops her first clam into it.

This move reveals far more than Jaime would like to see, and far, far less too, though he remains loathe to truly admit it. The light of the sun now holds a hint of pink and this time Jaime finds the colour suits her well. Her waist, scarred by him, as well as others, is the barest of curves, yet it is there and the muscles in her flat belly move fascinatingly with her shortening breaths.

Still, at least for a little while, she can't speak. War has seen the Maid of Tarth’s tongue grow less mild, for all that she lays the blame for that squarely at his door.

"How long do you think this will take?" he moans, teasingly, just the once, and knowing it will go unanswered, watching the woman wading in mud and shallow water do little but glare briefly up at him, for all that her head barely rises. Covered up to her knees in a fine wash of stirred-up silt, she doesn't respond, other than to step gently through the water again and stab her stick back down into the water.

Brienne continues to scour the mud, though only a short time seems enough to show that this cove will not be as giving and plentiful as the one they chose to rest in the day before. Repeated bouts of digging bring but a handful of shellfish up and her shoulders are starting to shake. Just when he is about to call her to come back to land, worried that she has been in there too long for so little reward, Brienne looks off to one side and suddenly begins to walk through the water at a fair clip, only then to come to a halt with a grimace. She shifts her weight slightly, carefully inching her foot across what must be a rockier part of the lake bottom. Her upper thighs twitch and her smallclothes are now wet, revealing a thatch of hair that troubles his cock just as much as it ever has. Her hips move damned near sinuously as she settles her feet securely, but not in the manner of women who swish about in long skirts, nor that of a dance. It is poise born of battle and balanced reactions; graceful in its own way. Jaime finds it oddly entrancing.

Then she crouches lower, a low moan at the increased cold escaping through the folds of cloth in her mouth, beginning to plunge both arms deep into the water. She has found a mussel bed, and starts pulling them up in numbers. The haul in her folded shirt quickly grows heavier and she has to jerk her head up a tiny amount to keep her collected morsels safely contained. It reveals the very underside of the slight swell of her breasts. Jaime has seen them before, her nipples taut and pale pink through falling snow, smeared in blood and sweat under darkness and in flickering torchlight. They are so small as to have been brushed on in a distracted moment by the Gods, too busy forming the strength of her muscle and bone and sinew to think much on her womanliness. 

Jaime almost winces when remembering how he used to insult her form. He looks again at the hints of the woman she absolutely is, and can’t think of her looking any other way than this. It may be so that she wouldn’t thank him for it, but to his mind, there is nothing more fitting than the idea of these parts of her being shielded and hidden; precious, made to be shared only when she would choose to do so. Absurdly, he feels the bitter taste of jealousy towards whichever Lord to whom she ends up wed, though that is the purpose of this final act. He may be walking to his death, but by having Brienne be the one who brings him to their new Queen, Jaime plans to see that she will get that very chance; to take a husband and her rightful place on her island. He can only pray, in these last days of his own, that the Gods will choose a kind man for her. 

Her work done, Brienne picks her way back out of the water, her hands a livid red with the chill. Her emerging legs are too, but Jaime doesn’t think he should pass comment on her wearing Lannister red stockings as the burden held in the fold of her shirt clatters at the violent shuddering brought about by her emerging into the cooling air. She takes the hem from her mouth as she moves and her teeth chatter loudly enough to be heard even when she is still some feet away. 

He unclasps and readies his cloak over his hand and stump as she stalks unsteadily over. “The Maid of Tarth returns, victorious,” he mutters lightly whilst she crouches and drops her harvest unceremoniously by the fire. He is already next to her, rubbing the inside of his cloak, still just about holding on to some of the heat from his body, furiously over her wet legs. It makes her breath hiss out in pain, but it needs be done. She is too cold now, and must be made warmer.

The strong, supple, yet huge muscles of her thighs can be felt shivering through dampening cloth, even with his scarred stump. Brienne strips off her wet shirt and reaches around behind him to grasp the dry one, pulling it swiftly over her head while Jaime pointedly doesn’t look and finishes the task of drying her legs. Then he hauls her back up to feet to help her get into her breeches and covers her with her fire-warmed cloak. She is still shaking as she sits down again and Jaime brings their furs, taking his place next to her. Icy cold, large hands grasp at his chest when he wraps them both in their careworn blankets.

They become quiet, just looking at the flames, waiting for Brienne to become warmer. Jaime will share what little he has of it with her, and later, when she is resting, he will take her discarded shirt out to the water’s edge and try to wash out the mud a little, without getting too chilled himself. From her place at his side, Brienne lifts her legs and moves them to rest over his. He pulls at the back of her farthest knee with his stump. It secures her cold feet away from the frozen ground and turns her to him, bringing her closer. 

When they are finally settled together and she nods her acquiescence against him, he leans forward slightly, taking her with him, to keep sharing warmth, only as far as he needs to. He reaches out to start carefully placing some of her haul on the hot stones at the edge of the fire. He uses a short stick to pull out some larger, glowing embers out to place closer to their food. 

This first dozen or so shellfish having been put into place, he sits up straight and looks to Brienne. Her head is perched on his shoulder and by now, nothing else can be seen of her, so obscured is she by fur and wool. Her shivering against him is easing and Jaime chuckles quietly as the sound of mussel shells creaking open reaches them. “This is not such a bad sort of life. Perhaps we should have run after all.”

How Brienne had argued that they should, at first. She had railed against his ever going back to the capital, but in the end, she had agreed that there probably wasn’t enough, even of Essos, for them to hide in. They were both too recognizable, and whilst Jaime could countenance spending the rest of his own life running from the wrath of Danaerys Targaryen, he wouldn’t have Brienne spending every waking breath, for as long as she lived, watching over one shoulder for the swift blades of mercenaries and assassins. 

Knowing that this plan is long since gone from them, Brienne smiles at him. “Would you have enjoyed being a hedge knight, Ser Jaime?”

“Not around here,” he smirks back. “The hedges are simply infested with thieves, you know.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she mildly replies. “Perhaps, when you have the opportunity, you should write a letter, chastising the whole of the North?”

“I would, my dear Maid, but I think I would get tired of writing the word ‘former’ before all of my titles at the end of it.” 

“I suppose it would be slightly easier if you were still Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,” Brienne says, “but you would make for a conspicuous hedge knight with all that armour you used to wear.”

“What was wrong with it?” he asks lightly, and feels her grinning against him when he moves to retrieve the first of the cooked shellfish, blowing on the heated shell so as not to burn his fingers too much.

“Golden armour, golden skin and golden hair,” she almost sings at him. “I have no doubt your horse brasses were by no means made of brass. I’ve always meant to ask, though. What colour were your boots?”

“Brown,” Jaime mutters, tipping the mussel into her mouth, thinking for a moment that she looks like nothing so much as a giant hatchling, waiting for food in a nest made of fur. “Though the spurs might have been gold,” he admits.

Brienne almost chokes at that, but recovers herself quickly enough. “And here you are,” she says and he feels her cool fingers wrap around his stump, unseen, “still with a golden hand.”

“In a place and time when a man is more likely to be killed for the ownership of a loaf of bread,” he mutters darkly, bringing them both to silence. 

The shellfish hiss and steam. Eventually, Brienne moves, sliding her cheek along his collarbone, seeming to ask a question of the air by his ear. “Are you sure about what we’re doing, Jaime?”

“Come now, wench,” Jaime says bleakly, “somebody has to make the walls of King’s Landing a little more handsome. I can only imagine the war has left them looking dreary.” He ignores the cry of protest that comes, muffled against his neck. “If not, I’m sure I’ll make the prettiest bonfire Westeros has ever -”

“Don’t,” is the word whispered urgently into his skin. A prayer of her own. A plea. One that is likely to go unanswered, for Brienne of Tarth is the only person in the world who would think of uttering it.

_She is too good for me._

How often they blackly jested about spilled guts and eyes fracturing into pale, icy shards while combat raged around them. But they never did about this. They’ve never even spoken of the future. They weren’t sure that they would see it.

Yet now it is here. At least for one of them.

Jaime raises his hand to Brienne’s wide neck to feel the life beating within her, beneath their ragged furs. Her face shifts against him until he can see one astonishing eye, half-lidded, looking up at him. She makes blue seem soothingly warm, does Brienne, driving the chill of winter into retreat for a moment and surrounding him with the balmy seas of her island home. “I think we have both been both dreamers, Brienne. But this war...,” Jaime pauses, turning his head until their noses touch, “...this fucking war has beaten some sense into us. We shouldn’t hope for the impossible.” He reaches further up and brushes the edge of her earlobe with the pad of his thumb. Brienne is utterly still under this light caress. “Let us hope for what we can get. Let us hope we can yet save you.”

Her face disappears, pressing again into his throat, stray strands of her short, brittle hair catching in his beard when she shakes her head. Brienne tightens her arms about him, drawing him even closer, as if by this action alone he will be saved too.


End file.
